Having been bought out and relaunched in mid-2023, industry supplier Aruze Gaming Global has set its sights on Europe as a key expansion target.
Just 18 months after the company was broken down, sold for parts and then reborn, Aruze Gaming Global is looking to expand beyond its traditional US and Asian markets with eyes set firmly on the many opportunities Europe has to offer.
Better known as AG2 these days, the famous Aruze name was a notable presence on the show floor of industry trade show ICE Barcelona in January, where SVP of International Operations Betty Zhao explained it was looking to bring a little Asian flair back to the gaming floors of the European continent.
“We are very excited about new developments in both Asia and the European market, and we are looking to bring a number of successful games to these two markets,” Zhao told Inside Asian Gaming.
“We’ve actually received a lot of positive feedback from customers at ICE Barcelona, so we’re very optimistic about what we can offer.”
As Zhao explains it, this isn’t the first time the Aruze name has been seen in Europe, although past forays came to a sudden halt when the original company filed for bankruptcy in early 2023. Instead, following acquisition of the slot machine assets by US-based firm Play Synergy months later – its ETG business was bought out by Interblock – Aruze was reborn as AG2 in July of the same year and is now looking to not only reclaim its piece of the European pie but significantly grow its presence as well.
“We do have some presence in the European market,” Zhao said.
“As you know, we have been newly born as AG2 and this year we are officially coming back to the European market. It’s a very big market and we look forward to having more presence here in 2025. That means we want to claim back the old Aruze market in Europe but also expand more, too.
“We are going to start where we have some presence already, in places like France, Portugal and Germany, and there has also been some interest from others at ICE.”
The strategy is simple: introduce games that have proven to be successful in Asia and the US but with minor tweaks to add further appeal for the European customer. Among the early titles being pushed are “Gong Gong Lai Fu” and “Triple Treasure Pot”.
“We do have some different game features designed for those two games,” Zhao explained. “They are more Asian-themed, Asian-centric games that we have further developed for the customer. The key for us is to bring the customer some excitement around the potential those games can offer.”
Also in the pipeline is a brand-new cabinet, Muso Summit, which was first unveiled at G2E in Las Vegas in October and is expected to hit gaming floors towards the end of 2025.
For Zhao, who joined AG2 shortly after its rise from the ashes, such ambitious plans highlight just how far the company has come over the past 18 months.
“We have been doing a lot of work behind the scenes,” she said. “We describe ourselves as a startup that has many years of history, so we’ve been doing a lot on new game development but also regaining the market. We’ve been busy getting more supplier licenses over the past year, because we needed to redo everything almost from scratch to start to sell to the market.”
As for the company’s traditional home of Asia?
“Asia for us is all about the Philippines as a key focus and Macau as our home area,” she said. “Those two markets are very important for us, and we are sticking with them as our core markets.”
